I am a big fan of Violent Acres. She does have a habit of dropping the F-Word a lot, and while I try to curb my own cursing, I manage to get past it because her irreverent insights into American culture are so spot on.
A recent article about gift giving really made he shout "hell yeah!", so I thought I’d link to it here so anyone reading my rubbish could find something a little more interesting 🙂
No, of course they don’t, but that’s the incredible statement found in a news.com.au article of a couple of days ago. Here’s the quote;
….the case of an elder who had asked him if rape was illegal.
"When I said yes, he told me `none of our young people know that’.
Someone is clearly gilding the lily here. Just think about what this guy is trying to say; That a young aboriginal man can grab a woman, forcibly have intercourse with her while she screams, crys and begs him to leave her alone, and NOT think there is anything wrong?
Seriously?
The article mostly deals with the fact that there is a problem with aboriginals understanding the legal process they end up being brought into, and I can see that as being pretty on the money, but the above statement is just bizzare.
The actual problem seems to be that when people in the communities canvasses for the story are brought to court, they don’t understand the meaning of a variety of words, and end up getting convicted in some cases of things they didn’t actually do because they didn’t understand.
Who’s fault is that? Don’t we have a legal system where accused people are represented? Isn’t it the job of ones legal counsel to make sure you understand what you are being charged with, what the consequences of a guilty verdict would be, and to help prepare a proper defence?
How is it that after figuring this out, nobody is investigating those that are representing these alleged criminals, and why are we not ensuring that all citizens are provided a proper level of representation when they are accused of a crime?
Another article on ZDNet about Telstra and the FTTN proposal and this time the headline suggests that it is a given that Telstra will need to be split in two if it wins the FTTN bid.
Some time back I wrote to the previous communications minister asking why the previous government wasn’t looking at splitting Telstra into a wholesale and retail business. At the time I got a wishy washy answer suggesting that for all intents and purposes, Telstra was already split in two.
We all know thats a load of rubbish, and I can only hope that over the next few months, someone in the Labor party has the guts to stand up and say what needs to be said, that Telstra should be forced to split into two.
I would go as far as to suggest that the wholesale arm should be regulated such that a single retail telco can only hold a small percentage of its stock, and perhaps the business should be audited by government each year to ensure a level playing field in telecoms service.
The vast sums of money that could be saved from having a single front end telecoms network would be enormous. ISP’s could stop spending large wads of cash fitting out exchanges with their own equipment, and could concentrate on the back end stuff that sets them apart.
Here’s hoping some common sense prevails for a change.
I was reading an article on ZDNet this morning regarding comments from the Auditor General relating to a claim by the opposition that the RFP for labor’d grand FTTN plan might be anti competative.
In a funny twist of irony, the Auditor General stated both that the RFP was fine, and that it did in fact include clauses that would allow for anti competitive behaviour on the part of the government.
Amendments to the RFP would be required for non-compliant bids to be accepted. The ANAO notes that the RFP provides the flexibility to make such amendments, should the government choose to do so.
Sweet; So we have bids put in, the government pre determines the winner and just changes the rules to suit the bid they want.
The longer this goes on the more it looks like the government have an agenda to hand Telstra large sums of tax payer money for basically nothing, and I have to wonder why that would be.
I’ll write more on this topic this week.
I’m constantly amazed not only at how poorly the average human being can behave, but also by how others can seek to make excuses for the behaviour. The latest step toward moral decay is this Henson characters photographing of naked children.
I think this article in the Sydney Morning Herald shows how we are sliding down the slippery slope. Let me pull out the key phrases;
It’s a triumph of the philistines
The title of the piece says it all. If you are upset by the fact that children are being stripped naked and photographed, my must be a philistine. There is no way you can just be a concerned citizen who thinks children’s naked bodies should be confined to the family bathroom. Clearly there are a lot of people who don’t have a problem with their children being on public, naked, display. That worries me for a start.
No other contemporary Australian artist in any medium enjoys such an exalted reputation or has a more devoted market for his work.
So what? His reputation has nothing to do with the question of being allowed to strip children naked and photograph them. Seriously. I can’t understand this argument at all. If I went next door, borrowed the neighbours two little girls, took all their clothes off and photographed them, I would be in prison right now. And rightly so.
it would be foolish to write them off as "pornography".
This is where the lewd sector try and skew us off point. These photos are NOT pornography. That doesn’t mean they are okay though. They are indecent, morally bankrupt and wrong, but are not porn. The writer of this and other similar pieces need to get back on topic. You cannot possible tell me its okay to photograph naked children.
It is not surprising that many people are shocked and disturbed by images of naked adolescents
No it is not, and this is the first statement that gets close to reality. However, you can see the writers use of the word adolescents to make the kids seem less like kids. We are talking about 12 and 13 year olds here. They are children, and you should refer to them as such.
He obtains the full co-operation of his subjects and their families, many of whom have remained friends.
Again, so what? So he as willing accomplices in his dirty work? If I have a few mates who think its fine to help me rob the local ANZ, does that make it all right?
The real point here is that the parents of these children should also be charged. They have cooperated in the exploitation of their children, and they should be made to understand the seriously of this. They should have the kids taken from them and placed in foster care where they can be safe from this kind of rubbish.
This case has the potential to drag on for many months in the courts, giving the world a ring-side view of the narrowness of our minds
Oh, I see; If I think that children should be children and not paraded around naked for the world of perverts to get off on, then I am narrow minded? I wonder if the writer of this piece has children, and if so, would they mind dropping them at my place for a little nude photo shoot. I’ll put the pics on the internet and call the art, it’ll be great!
No, they wouldn’t. And any self respecting parent wouldn’t either. Who is looking after the children?
I had to scratch my head and wonder today when I had cause to ring the jobsearch employer line. Nothing major, but the nice lady at the other end took the time to warn me about some important new rules that have just been brought in.
Apparently, I am not allowed to use the word "junior" in a job advertisement, with the only exception being to describe a junior rate of pay.
Seriously? This is so laughable, and yet I find myself thinking perhaps I should be writing to some federal ministers asking for a list of banned words that I am no longer allowed to use.
Alternatively, I might place a job ad and make it my business to use the word so many times it gives some bean counter a migraine.
It’s just another example of where government should get out of our lives and leave us to live them.
Nice to see that we have a real "education for all" attitude down here; Reports are that family members of the military dictatorship running Burma are living in Australia, and getting degrees at our Universities.
This, despite the fact that we have imposed sanctions on the country to try and force some change over there.
Perhaps we can stick this lot on the next plane full of medical and other supplies we send over for the people affected by the recent cyclone.
I was flipping through my "Road Ahead" the other day, and game across a smaller article on page 58 by Jon Dee, the founder and chairman of Planet Ark. In it he talks about the prospects for moving to hydrogen to power our cars and other transport options.
He restates what everyone knows; That to get there we need someone to push out hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, and we need a clean source of hydrogen. He goes on to point out that the University of NSW has developed a solar powered system for generating hydrogen from sea water.
In fact, the University has been saying this for a while, I found a press release from 2004 about it.
We also have the team over at Hydrexia, who are working to improve on our storage techniques for hydrogen.
It could be a technology that not only free’s us from the shackles of the oil industry, but if we get there first, could be a big winner for Australia’s economy. It could be, if we would fund it properly.
Sadly, nobody at the top is listening, which is why today I am writing to the Federal Environment minister to get his excuses for why there has been no announcement on developing hydrogen as a fuel since he got the job. You never know, we might get lucky.
It was one of Derryn Hinch’s favourite one liners, "Who’s looking after the children". It’s also one I might be adopting over the coming months and years, as I start to see a pattern of failure to care for our kids across society.
The latest evidence comes from Forest Lake, where a five year old girl was hit by a car. Its a pretty tragic thing to happen to anyone, let alone such a young child. Plenty of people are upset about it, but as you can see from this courier mail article, they are all upset with the driver of the car.
This week the local paper has a call to lower the speed limit 10k’s an hour on the road, citing the incident as the latest in a string of pedestrian accidents that demonstrate the speed limit needs lowering.
Really?
I would have thought it shows that either we have drivers failing to obey road rules such as stopping at red lights, giving way, and what not, or it shows that we have raised a generation of stupid people who can’t cross a street.
In the case of the 5 year old, she was (as would be expected), with her mother, but her mother was not, as far as I can tell, hit by the car. I hope the girl pulls through, and I hope her mother realises that you can’t let five years cross the road by themselves!
From what I gather, the pedestrian light was green, so the mother and child were following the rules to cross the road; That means that the drive failed to obey a traffic signal, and should be charged with that offence, plus something like grievous bodily harm for the damage this failure caused to the girl.
Once we stop worrying about a few k’s over the limit, and start worrying about how badly some people drive, things will improve. At the same time, we should perhaps start fining people for jaywalking again. I had two people wander out onto Ipswich road at Annerley just yesterday as I was approaching. It wouldn’t have taken much to go wrong for me to have hit one of them. Should we drop the speed limit to 40 on Ipswich road to allow for people to wander about it like a shopping mall?
In closing, let me make this wake up call to parents. You need to teach your kids how to cross a road. You need to set an example on how to do it safely, and you need to hold their hands while you do it!
It didn’t take long for the CMC to get back to me about the Heiner Affair. As I’ve always said, if you want to get something done quickly, choose to do nothing.
Stephen Lambrides, assistant commissioner for misconduct, wrote back to me and had this to say;
The allegations have been investigated and canvassed on several occasions including in a number of Senate Inquiries. They relate to events with occurred almost 20 years ago.
In these circumstances the CMC does not intend revisiting them.
Fantastic. Why do we even have a CMC, if it refuses to do it’s job? Here we have plenty of evidence of a criminal act, and yet nobody is willing to take it to court and give it a proper airing.
How can we have a free and open society in this country when the people we elect to run things are free to do whatever they wish without any oversight?
Comments welcome, please let me know what you think. Who else can I write to that might actually have the will and the power to move on this?